1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony communications and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for analyzing telephony interactions and reporting the results of analysis in real time.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
Call centers are organizations or companies that represent one or more companies providing goods and/or services to a consumer base. Most state-of-art call centers are dual capable meaning that they may handle both switched telephony calls and data network telephony (DNT) calls. A call center typically includes a plurality of workstations comprising computers connected to a local area network (LAN) or equivalent network. Each workstation includes a telephone or equivalent for handling voice calls. Voice calls may also be handled directly n the LAN-connected computers using appropriate telephony software.
Call centers are equipped generally to handle a wide range of interactions including live voice including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), connection oriented switched telephony (COST) and messaging including email, instant messaging, and chat. Other forms of communication may also be supported like video conferencing, fax correspondence, and network-based applications for collaborating. It is important to a call center that all call center activity is recorded and made available for data mining, training, and other processes that rely on historical data for improvement of the performance of the center. Software adapted to report call center activity are typically part of a call center software suite.
Existing call center reporting packages provide information on calls sorted by called party number or calling party number, and may include information gathered by an interactive voice response system. A problem with such reporting packages is that they often lack information on the content of the conversations that occurred between callers and call center agents whom are trained to handle call center interactions. Such information, if it is present at all, is in a separate set of reports and not linked to the core set of call center reports. The call center administrator thus lacks a comprehensive view the activity in the center.
Another limitation in call center technology is the lack of useable interaction analytics that can be provided to agents and supervisors in real time to help them optimize the interaction experience of the customer and agent. Current call center systems do not provide speech analytic information to the agent or supervising personnel for example, but are limited to more static screen pop information that is either furnished by the caller at the start of the call or retrieved from a database during the interaction between a caller and an agent. Existing systems cannot advise the agent based on information gathered and analyzed about the current conversation.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is system and methods for capturing and analyzing current interaction activity including speech and text interaction such that the outcome of analysis can be made part of the historical record of the call center and be made available to managers, supervisors, agents and systems in such a way as to enable corrective intervention to occur during the interaction process.